If they want to air their dirty laundry in public, I'm happy to grab popcorn and watch. I'm honestly shocked by the number of folks on this thread who don't know the specifics, and most probably never even bought anything from Sparkfun or Adafruit, but still want to condemn one of the companies in the strongest possible terms...
ESH?
This dancing around what was actually said or sent all reminds me of that meme, Dipshit289: dude you don't wanna know... Oh the horror...
Fwiw, there's this thread that seemingly explains what employee was doing the harassment - and shows Phil overreacting and exaggerating the 'harassment' itself, as well as misattributing blame: https://chaos.social/@North/115605819126197877
That makes me think much less of both Adafruit and SparkFun. I really, really wish all sides would simply put everything out for us to evaluate. Having to trust various unreliable narrators is not respectful to the time of all of us potential customers.
I've been hearing about this drama through a group chat for a long time. To be honest, neither side looks good in this one. Both companies have behaved disappointingly at different times for different reasons. I'm not doing this is an arbitrary "both sides" dismissal. There have been actions from both companies that would have been unacceptable in isolation.
The OSHW world revolves a lot around conferences, social media, and IRC/Matrix/Discord servers. Not coincidentally, this feels a lot like old IRC and forum drama of years past.